Some stats and such that may or may not be interesting:
Edgar Renteria might not totally suck
Edgar Renteria is hitting 288/351/404 since the All Star Break. He is a career 290/347/404 hitter. He also has only 4 strike outs in his last 57 plate appearances (and 4 GIDP – eek). A return to normalcy or a blip in a crappy season?
Defensively he looked the best he has all season in the Indians series and +/- still has him at 0, meaning he is quite average. In RZR there are 9 qualified shortstops in the AL and Renteria is tied for 4th meaning he is kind of average.
Guillen can pick it
It turns out that Carlos Guillen can play defense. He isn’t stellar, but his .716 RZR is 6th out of 11 qualified shortstops. He rates as -1 in +/- which is 14th among MLB third baseman. Not stellar, but not bad for a guy on his 3rd position in the last calendar year. Considering that AL third sackers are hitting 266/339/428 and Guillen is hitting 286/374/437 that’s not a bad situation.
On kind of a downer note, Guillen hit 318 – 320 – 320 from 2004 to 2006. He dropped to 296 last year and 286 this year. And his slugging percentage is the lowest it’s been since his hamstring plagued 2005 season. His OBP is still solid, and there is a league widde dip in slugging so his OPS+ is still at 116. But is this the first step in what may be a rapid decline? It’s certainly possible for a player on the wrong side of 30.
Plunkocity
Clay Rapada drilled Grady Sizemore yesterday with the bases loaded driving in a run. It was the 5th time this season that a Tigers pitcher has plunked in a run. Also of note, Tigers pitchers have plunked 13 Indians batters this season. That is more than double the next closest team, the White Sox who have received 6 bruises from Tigers pitchers. A complete plunkocity report is available for your perusal.
I can’t be convinced that the plunkocity of Cleveland and White Sox is unintentional, or unwarranted.
I’m glad I’m not the only one to notice that Renteria has been playing much better all-around . It’s almost a sure thing that he’s back with the team next season.
Guillen has settled in nicely at 3b too, so it looks like are infield is set for the foreseeable future. Things have turned out nicely for the Tigers.
I’m sure glad that we ended up trading away Pudge instead of Inge. This is the best thing that has happened to Inge since he was a Tiger. 1st he lost his catchers job, then his 3b job, but now he has earned the catchers job back.
Inge, despite batting .217, had a higher SLG and OPS than Pudge, who was hitting .295.
Inge, per AB, was also much more productive than Pudge.
Inge had only 181 AB’s, but scored 25 runs and had 31 RBI’s.
Pudge, had 302 AB’s, but only scored 33 runs with 32 RBI’s.
If Inge was projected to have 600 AB’s, he’d have 75 runs, 27 Homeruns, and 93 RBI’s.
Pudge in 600 AB’s, would only have 66 runs, 10 homers, and 62 RBI’s.
Guiilen needs to be dropped back to 6th in the order.
Guillen was hitting .336 with a 1.025 OPS batting 6th.
He’s only hitting .259, with a .717 OPS batting 3rd.
Maybe Joyce should be batting 3rd. He almost leads the team in both in SLG and OPS. He surely deserves to play everyday until proven otherwise.
It’s not unheard of to put a no-name player in the 3rd spot. Carlos Quentin moved to the WhiteSox 3 hole back in May right before he hit his 10th homerun. Last year, he hit .214 with 5 homers in 229 AB’s for the D’backs. Now he’s the AL homerun leader.
Rapada didn’t really “plunk” Sizemore yesterday, he grazed his jersey, which if you ask me shouldn’t even count as a free base.
I have noticed Renteria being better. That said, I hope they don’t pick up his option if Hollimon can play short for a year or Iorg is miraculously ready by 2009.
Chief Monday:
“Guillen was hitting .336 with a 1.025 OPS batting 6th.
He’s only hitting .259, with a .717 OPS batting 3rd.”
I wouldn’t have guessed that…I wouldn’t be surprised if he scored more runs batting 3rd though (batting 6th he would have been followed by GIDP or GIDP Maximus in the lineup).
I doubt the Sizemore plunk was intentional. Or most of the Verlander ones; he just tends to do that. The 3 times Garko was hit though–especially the June 9 one the AB after he hit a HR–I don’t think they were flukey graze-jobs…
And I would be unshocked to find out there was intent behind the Inge HBP Wednesday, especially if they think he has been calling the Plunk Pitch on Cleveland (8 of the 13 plunks have been with Inge behind the plate). Which is why I think Garko (again) got one to even things up when he came up in the 8th.
Luckily by Thursday everyone was too tired to screw around with plunking.
BTW whatever happened to Eric Plunk? maybe he is still in the Cleveland organization and behind all this…
What? Oh dear lord! No longer is it the month of Julius, nor the day of Thursday! Best get me hence…
The Twins DFA’d Livan Hernandez and Craig Monroe today so they could call up Liriano. Sure am glad they bothered to run Livan out there one more time against the Sox instead of throwing Liriano at them. That was the only game the Sox won, BTW.
If only “Craig Monroe” would tell somebody what he did with the real Craig Monroe, last seen in 2006…
All I know is Kelly Shoppach better get plunked in his word hole next time around.
Bloodthirsty Chris sighting at 1800 hours
With the Tigers sticking with “1-pitch walk” Inge over Pudge and bringing in Kyle “The Sobbing Barber” Farnsworth, Chris should enjoy the remainder of the season…
“Edgar Renteria might not totally suck”
I have to mention, belatedly, my admiration for billfer’s headlines…something for Edgar’s mom no doubt to clip and stick on the fridge…
in case Renteria’s mom only read the headline or the article, but not our comments.
..I will go ahead and say it
“Renteria still sucks”